In this day and age, social media must be one of your top priorities for increasing the online visibility of your online business. Social networks are so popular & have such a massive reach across the globe, you would be mad not to tap into this method of online marketing.

Although social media is a great source of targeted traffic and potential clients, you must learn how to approach each specific network to get the best response. You cannot literally open an account, spam all your product or service links on peoples profiles and expect to generate sales. That is not why people have a social network account in the first place.

After all, people are generally on social networks to connect with friends, be entertained by playing games and sharing their favorite links, videos or music with each other, so you must think outside of the box to fulfill the needs of social network users, yet integrate subtle marketing messages that will not bombard users with endless marketing jargon.

Your campaign must be fun, entertaining and useful enough to persuade people to share it with their network of friends. Something controversial that’s related to your target market has a better chance of going viral than a boring marketing message that’s designed specifically to generate sales. Never go for direct sales, this puts people off and will make it much harder for you to connect with your target audience.

Check out BlueCross BlueShield’s video that went viral via Social Media:

Not only can social media be a very effective, viral marketing method, but it also offers you the opportunity to defend and develop relationships with new and existing customers. Providing several different methods of communication on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, will enable you to broadcast new promotions or even provide support to any issues your customers face.

Remember, a happy shopper equals long term profit & word of mouth marketing. If you are quick to respond to issues posted on your social networks, people tend to share your Facebook pages, updates and promotions more willingly.

With professional Facebook applications becoming more popular, you can use these within your campaigns to better engage social network users. By using the viral capabilities, every time someone connects & uses your app, you gain free exposure on the profiles of your users. Once again, you must ensure to create an entertaining application that provides something useful to the social network users, but at the same time, you can integrate subtle marketing messages for massive exposure and brand awareness.

Do you have a Facebook and/or Twitter page for your business? How often do you post? What sort of success are you seeing?

About Alan Moore: Alan is an Internet Marketing Consultant with ReachLocal Baltimore. His mission is to help you increase your revenues and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He manages over $1,600,000 in yearly marketing budgets and has worked with local businesses, agencies and the US government. Give him a call at (877)655-3438 to schedule a Free Online Marketing Consultation.